Long Covid, a great imitator of the 21th century 2022 Goldman

[Andy]

Introduction

As a syndrome which can take multiple forms and mimic different diseases, long Covid can be considered as a novel “Great Imitator,” a nickname attributed to syphilis more than a century ago (1). Indeed, there is a body of evidence that infection with SARS-CoV-2 can result in protean pathological changes which persist after the virus has been cleared, a clinical situation qualified as long Covid or post-COVID-19 condition (2). The impact of long COVID-19 on public health is expected to be huge since more than half of COVID-19 survivors develop post-acute sequelae according to systematic review studies (3–6). The real burden of long Covid is however not established due to the elusive definition of the condition (7) and the emergence of the Omicron variants. Although the risk of developing long Covid after infection with an Omicron variant has been found to be reduced by half as compared to previous strains, the absolute numbers will clearly remain high (8). It is therefore important to rapidly address the several challenges related to long Covid.

Open access, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2022.1026425/

 

[Andy]

"Given the heterogeneity of long Covid and the poor knowledge on its pathogenesis, it is not surprising that its treatment is merely symptomatic. Pain medications including opioids, antidepressant drugs and anxiolytic drugs are frequently used (10), often without adequate surveillance. Although guidelines have been proposed by several learned societies, certain therapeutic modalities remain a matter of debate such as behavioral therapy and grade exercise therapy for symptoms suggestive of myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue (17)."

 

[rvallee]

Yeah, it's almost like the symptoms of infectious illness are common to infectious illnesses, or something like that. This conflicts with the algorithm of mental illness which nowadays essentially consists of: the common symptoms of illness. But if there's one thing a forest looks like, it's another forest. You can tell by the trees and other features common to forests.

Another thing that is different, yet very similar: hurricanes, never the exact same, still mostly the same thing.

What's annoying is that those symptoms could tell us a lot about how they work, but instead no one cares and you get nonsense like "treatment is merely symptomatic" when they don't even do that because this only works when you know what to treat.

Almost like what those illnesses have in common is the immune system, more than anything. Which, hey, good news, is the current theory, called the sickness response. I guess everyone just conveniently forgets it as soon as they learn it, like the Krebs cycle.